If it's a one-time order and we have the books in stock in our office, I'll create the invoice, get a credit card to guarantee the order, and ship the books. PUNJA: With a bookseller, I ask them to get in touch with our Canadian distributor, Jaguar Book Group, and place the order with them. What happens when a bookseller wants copies of an ECW title? Do you have those books and can you send them?' OK, cool. Sometimes they're like, 'We have this order but we don't have those books. It's always about shipping books to us, an author, an event, or a bookseller, or following up on the status of those books as they travel somewhere. PUNJA: I am in contact with the distributor every day. I think I pretty much vacillated between feeling like a rock star when I figured something out that made an ECW process faster (like Excel Pivot tables), and being overwhelmed when I realized there was something else I didn’t know anything about (like the Ontario Tax Credit). I was still doing a bit of marketing and publicity work while learning the ropes in accounting and database magic. He wanted to step back from the meaner side of the business and hired me to do it. At the time, David Caron was taking over as owner and publisher. Like a lot of other interns, I thought I'd landed the best gig. After taking Humber's publishing program, I landed a marketing internship at ECW. PUNJA: I was working in the head office of Black's Photography, trying to figure out where I actually wanted to be.
Punja started her career development ( get it?) in photography.( I actually love working in that world and everything about my job is made better by bending it to my will. Our Filemaker-Pro-powered database aggregates data on everything from sales, a title's print runs, and territory rights sales, to publicity hits and royalties earned. I enter contract details, author information, and rights splits so authors (or agents) get paid their advances/royalties on time and in the right currency. It needs an ISBN, a spot in the production schedule, and other goodies. PUNJA: A freshly signed contract for a new book lands on my desk. Once a contract is signed, she goes to work.
I’m always doing is making a to-do list and balancing what needs to get done right away and what can wait a day or two. Other things that come to me are direct sales, awards submissions, grant applications, entering new invoices, depositing cheques, updating inventory, ordering office supplies. The rest depends on what lands on my desk or inbox. That’s probably the only part of my day that’s consistent. Hold on to your pants, because next, I do the same with weekly sell-through reports from Amazon, Kindle, Apple, Indigo, Costco, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Overdrive, Nook, Booknet, and Bookscan. PUNJA: My day starts with downloading inventory, backorders, and sales reports from distributors and loading them into our database. She jokes that she could be replaced by a 'Linux-based robot,' but she also notes that 'better planning comes from better humans.' The Canadian publishing industry would probably agree that, by that measure, she must be a truly outstanding planner. In the world of printed books, shipping is key. If you work with ECW – either as an author, bookstore, event organizer, or vendor – you've probably contacted Punja. If she doesn't show up to work, books don't get to stores, events, and authors on time, bills might not get paid, cheques might not get deposited, and credit card statements might not get reconciled. What are these operations? Isn't everything that happens in publishing an 'operation' of some sort? Athmika Punja, who has been at ECW Press, one of Canada's largest independent publishers, for about a year and a half, is listed on the site under 'general office inquiries,' but as our interview reveals, she's responsible for a lot more than that. The title 'Operations Coordinator' may be one of the most mystifying of all publishing.
#Applescript wordservice series
'Acknowledgements' is an interview series that aims to change that in some small way.
(Though it's not all gloom-and-doom it can certainly have its moments.) Many publishing workers remain invisible to readers and even authors, toiling away on initiatives and tasks unfamiliar to all but those already deeply enmeshed in the publishing world. If the industry works at all, it's only because many dedicated and diligent people work or little reward like that horse, Boxer, from Animal Farm. Book publishing, as an industry, is not unlike a Jenga tower held together by sheer force of will.
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